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Public Choice
Published in: Public Choice 3-4/2020

09-05-2020

James M. Buchanan and Frank H. Knight on democracy as “government by discussion”

Author: Ross B. Emmett

Published in: Public Choice | Issue 3-4/2020

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Abstract

Among twentieth century inheritors of the classical liberal mantle, the notion that democracy could be understood as “government by discussion” is found most prominently in the work of Frank H. Knight and James M. Buchanan. The purpose of the present paper is to compare Knight and Buchanan’s use of the expression “democracy is government by discussion”. Knight adopted the expression in reference to the means by which (a) individuals coordinate decisions and actions to facilitate constitutional decisions about social action and (b) we coordinate society’s norms and values. For Buchanan, democracy as discussion occurs only at the level of constitutional decisions. Thus, while their use of the expression unites them, it also provides a way of examining the divide between them.
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Footnotes
1
The fourth and final section of the paper, entitled “Social Science and Social Action”, also was published separately in 1935 in the International Journal of Ethics, now simply known as Ethics (Knight 1935d).
 
2
A complete genealogy of Knight’s various attempts to publish a book for Pacific University are detailed in the appendix to Emmett (2011). The three Pacific University lectures Knight delivered were: I. Social Health and Disease; II. Economic Individualism and the Good Life; and III. Freedom, Authority, and Power. Along with a set of introductory comments, the manuscripts of the three lectures are in the Frank Knight Papers, Box 24, Folders 17, 19–23 (Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library), and total 189 manuscript pages.
 
3
One might have expected Knight to retreat into utilitarianism, like some of his eighteenth-century precursors. But, while utilitarianism was not as great a folly to him as Christian ethics or some form of idealism, it held no appeal. The key to his rejection of utilitarianism lies in his appreciation of the necessity of independent standards as guides for ethics as well as aesthetics. Bentham’s claim that pushpin was a good as poetry was as abhorrent to Knight as the notion that a bowl of gruel was as good as a bottle of claret (see Knight [1939] 1999).
 
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Metadata
Title
James M. Buchanan and Frank H. Knight on democracy as “government by discussion”
Author
Ross B. Emmett
Publication date
09-05-2020
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Public Choice / Issue 3-4/2020
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-020-00815-4

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